Planner offers Milford improvement ideas

Updated 11:54 pm, Tuesday, July 17, 2012

MILFORD -- An expert city planner offered before the Planning and Zoning Board on Tuesday night his take on how best to refashion three parts of Milford: Cherry Street, Fowler Field and Walnut Beach.

The planner, Alan Plattus, of the Yale Urban Design Workshop, said Walnut Beach presents the most difficult challenges of the three because population density, the threat of coastal storms and the neighborhood's history are conspiring against planning at every turn.

To make matters worse, the Federal Emergency Management Agency now requires "hardened" home construction along the shore, owing to the threat of wave and coastal flood damage. Sewage handling capacity is another issue.

Still, Plattus said there are some things that can be improved upon. The easterly tip of East Broadway was widened years ago for a convention center that never materialized. It created a street that is dangerous for foot traffic and yet doesn't improve traffic flow, he said.

"It's a two-block piece of very wide road ---- almost a four-lane highway ---- that necks down to a narrow road, so it doesn't benefit anybody," he said. "And everyone prefers the character and feel of a narrow road."

He recommended the four-lane stretch be narrowed to the width of other neighborhood streets. He also said there are untapped opportunities for improvements in the commercial sector near the foot of Naugatuck Avenue.

Milford is updating its plan of development and conservation, which must be done every 10 years to qualify for state and federal grant money. Plattus and his group are working on the development plan, with a final report is expected in the coming weeks. In the meantime, the P&Z will stage more public hearings on the matter, Chairman Mark W. Bender said.

Plattus also took a general look at the city's 17-mile shoreline.

He noted many of the city's beachfront homes were created in the era before motorcars, when most people arrived by streetcar. As a result, the cityscape changed dramatically in the 1930s through the 1970s, as homeowners added garages and driveways, and enclosed their front porches to add more living space. And many of the homes, he said, are on tiny lots are far to small for today's standard.

"They're so small, the lots would be unbuildable today," he said.

He offered a scathing assessment of the appearance of many shoreline streets in the city.

"The big porches that you used to see in the old postcards -- well, now you have garages and filled-in porches with small windows, and you have new construction that turns a blank face to the street, oftentimes with a big two- and three-bay garage only visible from the street," he said. "Fortunately, a few of these grand homes still survive."

He said it would be up to the P&Z to determine how future development should look ---- such as whether to just create guidelines or develop more stringent requirements.

"The installation of traffic-calming features, plus mixed-use development ---- combining commercial and residential ---- would make it look more like a `Main Street' as opposed to strip development," he said.

The key to making this a success, he said, is to discourage location of parking lots in front of stores, instead repositioning them in mid-block lots, or behind the buildings.

"We have to move away from `front yard' parking," he said. "Everybody agrees, and Cherry Street is a critical gateway to downtown, so the appearance of Cherry Street is very important."

Regarding Fowler Field, just south of the library, Plattus said that there was "vociferous" sentiment to keeping it park-like, perhaps with more passive recreational opportunities than now, as opposed to "structured play," such as softball fields. He also said that the field could offer improved access to the shore.

He floated an idea at an earlier public hearing to turn the park into a shore-front shopping center with 60 housing units, but this was resoundingly booed.

Plattus also said that the commuter parking lot, which eats into a good chunk of the park setting, should relocated to another downtown spot.

"I think if the commuter parking is relocated, you have a wonderful opportunity to greatly improve the recreational value of Fowler Field," he said.